We have been working very hard learning Handball for our upcoming tournament.

Demi – I think Handball is really good because you have to work in a team.

Sam – It’s good because it gets your muscles stronger.

Ava – It’s really fun practicing.

Aidan – It’s very challenging because you are against your friends.

In Maths we finished Time – yes it was time for it to go!! We can now all use an analogue clock and five minute intervals, not to mention calculating periods of time.

In writing we were learning about comic strips and ran a competition to find the best one.  Congratulations to Rachael Muir and Cameron Notman.

And finally we are just back from a lovely church service to celebrate Harvest, and we can’t stop singing Big Red Combine  Harvester!!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Well here they are! Our Low Port Photos and video – enjoy!

Hi Everyone!

We have been busy navigating our way around Didbook this week in preparation for us using it to record our learning journey.  We are excited about all the different things we can put on it, and will be using it this year instead of our Profile Jotters.

Next week we are off to Low Port and we have been talking about what it will be like, what we will be learning and of course, the best clothes to wear to the disco!  An important reminder that on the Monday all children should bring their own packed lunch but Tuesday and Wednesdays are provided. We also asked Mrs Aitken a few questions we had –

We  should not bring technologies – no devices of any kind.

We can bring a hairdrier but not straigtening irons.

We do not need sweets for nighttime.

We meet at the shelter for 9am – the children know where abouts!

This week we learned all about William Wallace and the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Did you know that all his army wore yellow tunics not tartan ones? They rubbed plants on the their tunics to dye them. Also the Scots outwitted the English bu using great tactics, they won even although the English had many more cavalrymen than the Scots.

We also wrote newspaper reports on the battle during writing, and learned about the features of a newspaper.

In H&W we learned about having a growth mindset – feel free to ask us about it!

Have a great holiday weekend everyone!

Thanks to everyone who came along to meet the teacher – we had lots of positive feed back and just a wee reminder on Class Dojo – we are not using it at the moment, but are instead using our peg system which the children came up with.  Everyone starts the week with 5 minutes Golden Time and earns a further five minutes each day. When a pupil’s behaviour choice is deemed inappropriate they are given a warning and move their peg to challenge that choice. They are given support in class to improve.  If they choose not to improve then they move another peg and don’t earn that days Golden Time.  Everyone with complete Golden Times earns a sticker for our Golden Club.

We have had a busy week with getting our photos taken, attending p7 assembly and welcoming Mrs Dunbar who came into our class to get to know us. We also found out about a man called William Wallace and how he became involved in the SWOI.

NB PLEASE REMEMBER TO RETURN THE GREEN FORM AND THE BEHAVIOUR CONTRACT IF YOUR CHILD IS GOING TO LOWPORT.

We have continued unravelling the Scottish Wars of Independence this week.

I liked the video because it taught us what happened – James

I learned Alexander the third fell from his horse and died – Brodie

I liked doing the timeline – Olivia.

In maths we have –

The Ripples have been learning to subtract  with borrowing, I like it! Demi

I liked practising my subtraction skills on the netbooks – Grace

I liked subtracting four digit numbers – Sam

Also we have been busy, busy, busy learning about commas and how to write a letter.

We are on the countdown to Low Port and we are very excited!

A huge welcome to you all to our P5A blog.  We have had a very busy week getting organised and on with our learning. We have already started learning about the Scottish Wars of Independence, and quite a few of us can’t wait to learn more about the battles!

We have brought home a couple of admin tasks this weekend which we have to return, so please help us remember…….

We have also enjoyed meeting our new Head Teacher Mrs Dunbar, and we are looking forward to showing her just how successful we are at learning.

Have a great weekend!

P5a Blog Entry – 13.5.16

English and Literacy

This week in English we were focussing on note-taking. We had to read a passage in pairs and then make notes under subheadings and did very well with this task! We now know that notes are used to record information quickly and use key words, rather than full sentences.

We then applied our knowledge of note-taking when we began to create a fact file of our own new species of animal. We selected appropriate subheadings: habitat, diet, description, and then took notes under these headings. These notes helped us when we began to design a leaflet on our new animal and had to write out our notes in sentences.

We are really enjoying the book that we are reading together in class: ‘Rat Burger’ by David Walliams. We get through about a chapter per day and love to make predictions about what might happen next in the story! We are also developing our summarising skills when Miss Brown asks us to explain what has happened in the story so far!

Pupil comments:

Alanna – I liked making the leaflets and drawing our new species on the front of the leaflet.

Ty – I am enjoying our class book, it’s full of suspense!

Maths and Numeracy

This week we have been making connections between our previous learning of fractions and our new topic of percentages. We now know that the whole amount of anything is recognised as 100%. We have been looking at equivalent percentages and working out fraction, percentage and decimal conversions.   Next week we will move onto finding the percentage of an amount using various strategies.

Pupil comments:

Sophie – I didn’t realise how many things used percentages, like in shops and when downloading music. It has been fun to learn about percentages!

Tom – I found maths quite tricky this week but I think it will get easier as I learn more.

LATC Topic

We have been continuing with our topic ‘What a wonderful world.’ This week we have been learning about food chains! We have been classifying animals into different groups: carnivores, herbivores and omnivores, and working out what animals eat and if this makes them predators or prey.

We have also been following the progress of our caterpillars which have now turned into chrysalids! We have moved them into a netted enclosure so that they can continue to grow and eventually turn into butterflies. We have found this process very exciting to monitor each day!

Pupil Comments:

Lucy – I didn’t know how caterpillars made their chrysalid themselves and enjoyed watching this happen.

Zoe – I found it interesting to learn about food chains and what animals eat other animals!

Have a great weekend everyone!

English and Literacy

This week in English we were working in pairs to complete a reading comprehension on a written passage.  We had to use lots of different skills to do this, including finding evidence in the passage to back up our opinions, and using our ‘context clues’ to work out the meaning of tricky words.

We have also been working on developing our writing skills and were writing about the long weekend.  We had to remember to include capital letters, punctuation and paragraphs.  Some of us used ‘wow’ words to impress Miss Brown!

Ty – I enjoyed the reading exercise, it was really fun but tricky as well.

Lucy – Doing our writing regularly is helping me to improve!

Maths and Numeracy

In Maths this week we have been working on fractions word problems, which we found a bit tricky at first but we were beginning to understand be the end of the week.  We can now simplify basic fractions and find a fraction of a quantity.   We are still enjoying the game ‘Exterminate’ and ask to play it in every maths lesson!

On Thursday we did something exciting in maths!  We had 5 different stations and 15 minutes at each station.   There was an ICT station with a game which required us to use our division strategies, and a fractions card game to improve our speed and accuracy.  There was also a ‘Mild, spicy, Hot’ station where we got to choose the difficulty of our fractions worksheet and give ourselves a challenge!

Rhia – I’ve really enjoyed division, I think the games are helping me with this.

Lennox – I’ve really enjoyed doing fractions, especially simplifying fractions!

LATC Topic

We have found our topic very interesting this week as we have been learning all about evolution and what animal characteristics help them best to survive! We have discussed the kinds of things that can lead to an animal’s extinction, such as other competition and changing climates.  We have identified the features of animals that help them to survive, adapt and reproduce within a natural environment.

As part of this week’s topic, we really enjoyed creating our brand new species of animal!  Firstly we designed our animal, thinking carefully about how it would look like and what colour it would be.  We then labelled our new species, identifying the features we had given it that would help it to survive in its habitat.

We have also been monitoring the progress of our classroom experiments – we have been growing runner beans and recording our observations.  We are always very excited to see how they are growing every morning!  Our other experiment has been watching our tiny caterpillars get bigger and bigger.  We are looking forward to them changing into chrysalis’ and eventually butterflies!

Abbie – I really enjoyed creating our species this week and combing different features of animals.

Lucie – I have learned about evolution and how animals can become extinct.

Have a great weekend everyone!